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Public bitcoin miners are cutting hashrate — fast. A 21% drop over recent months tells you everything about where the money is moving right now.
Core Scientific basically isn’t a bitcoin miner anymore. In Q2 2026, the company pulled in $136.7 million from colocation services and just $27.5 million from actually mining bitcoin. Colocation accounted for 83% of total sales, up sharply from the prior quarter. That’s a pretty dramatic swing for a company that built its entire identity around bitcoin infrastructure. TeraWulf moved in the same direction — HPC lease revenue hit $31.9 million, representing 71% of its total revenue. Both firms are now, in practical terms, data center operators that happen to still mine a little bitcoin on the side.
Not everyone’s there yet.
Riot Platforms reported $23.2 million in data center revenue against $113.7 million from mining, so mining still dominates for Riot. Bitdeer went the other way entirely — the company saw a 44% increase in realized hashrate, largely driven by its SEALMINER production pipeline, reaching 63.0 EH/s by Q2. Bitdeer’s self-mining capacity hit 73 EH/s by June, and the company produced 990 bitcoins in a single month, a significant year-over-year jump. So the industry isn’t moving in lockstep. Some firms are leaning harder into AI and HPC, others are doubling down on mining itself.
How Bad Is the Hashrate Decline
The combined hashrate of public miners fell 13.4% from Q4 2025 to Q2 2026. The broader Bitcoin network’s average hashrate dropped too, though at a slower pace — 10.6%. That gap matters. It means public miners are pulling back faster than the network overall, probably because they have more flexibility to redeploy capital and infrastructure toward AI workloads than smaller or private operators do.
Cango is a clear example of how fast this can happen. The company entered the market in late 2024, peaked at 50 EH/s, then started decommissioning inefficient machines almost immediately after. Six months later, its capacity had fallen 63%. That’s a brutal contraction by any measure, and it reflects both weaker mining economics and the pull of competing opportunities.
Keel Infrastructure went further. The company completed the full decommissioning of its U.S. mining operations to prepare for data center construction. No partial pivot — a full stop. Revenue from those new data center ventures hasn’t materialized yet, so Keel is essentially in a gap period right now. Unclear when that changes.
This Isn’t China 2021
People keep comparing the current hashrate drop to China’s 2021 mining ban, which cut the network’s computing power roughly in half almost overnight. But that was a single regulatory shock, sharp and sudden. The recovery that followed was equally sharp — the U.S. emerged as the dominant mining hub, and capacity rebuilt fast.
What’s happening now is different. There’s no single triggering event. It’s a slower grind driven by weaker mining economics, rising electricity costs, and the fact that AI infrastructure can generate better returns on the same physical assets. Companies that expanded aggressively during the post-China recovery are now repurposing that very infrastructure for GPU clusters and HPC colocation. The assets didn’t disappear — they’re just pointed at different workloads.
And that’s kind of the key point. Bitcoin miners, almost uniquely among tech operators, already own the land, power contracts, and cooling systems that AI data centers need. The pivot isn’t as hard as it sounds. It’s still hard — construction timelines, customer contracts, technical retooling — but the underlying infrastructure isn’t starting from scratch.
MARA and American Bitcoin have kept expanding their mining operations, but those gains haven’t been enough to offset what other companies are pulling back. The net result across the public miner universe is still negative.
What the Numbers Actually Mean
Colocation and HPC revenue are still small in absolute terms for most of these companies. Riot’s $23.2 million in data center revenue is real, but it’s a fraction of its mining income. The transition is uneven, and for several operators, the new revenue streams haven’t yet replaced what they’re walking away from in mining.
The economics will probably get clearer over the next few quarters as more data center contracts either close or fall apart. Bitdeer’s 990 bitcoins produced in one month, with its expanding SEALMINER pipeline, at least shows one viable path — scale mining aggressively while competitors retreat.
Hub: Bitcoin price, news, and analysis
Frequently Asked Questions
How much has public miner hashrate dropped in 2026?
Public bitcoin miners cut their combined hashrate by 21% over recent months, with the broader decline from Q4 2025 to Q2 2026 measured at 13.4% for the public miner group specifically.
How much revenue does Core Scientific make from AI colocation vs. bitcoin mining?
In Q2 2026, Core Scientific reported $136.7 million in colocation revenue versus $27.5 million from bitcoin mining, with colocation making up 83% of total sales.
Why It Matters
The shift away from traditional bitcoin mining towards colocation services highlights a significant trend in the crypto market, where companies are adapting to the changing economic landscape and capitalizing on emerging technologies like AI. This pivot indicates a broader industry response to declining profitability in bitcoin mining, driven by increased competition and rising energy costs, suggesting that miners are increasingly seeking alternative revenue streams to sustain their operations. As public miners redefine their business models, it raises questions about the future viability of bitcoin mining as a primary revenue source and its potential impact on the overall market dynamics.
